[music] Hey fellow G&Ters, those of us like our spirituality with a twist. So we have moved into our next little G& series trying to understand this little thing called Christianity. Uh we got here because all of 20 all of 2025 for us has been one big series. America, what the hell? And in trying to understand the different ingredients that sort of went into the [...] salad of 2025 in America, we get to this point of really talking about the toxic aspects of Christianity, which we started uh last episode uh because it is one of the little ingredients that went into this particular nasty combo that made up 2025. And we've been trying to like do things to help all of us understand that better. But this raised raises a really interesting question which we're going to try to continue to explore and we'll see how long it takes us to do this. But I think it's really one of the fascinating subjects which is okay there's a toxic Christianity there's obviously non-toxic Christianities but you get to the point of asking like what's the real Christianity and that's what we're going to try start exploring in these episodes um we're going to try to explore this idea of what is the answer to the question what is the real Christianity and the answer may very likely turn out to be there is no such thing as the real Christian real Christianity

well that's what it means as we go along

spoiler alert There it there is no real Christianity. That's that's for sure.

It's been very striking to Oh, okay. Let me do the thing and then we'll continue on. But before we do all those get into all those rich details of stuff we're going to talk about, if you could please do all the things that everyone asks you like and subscribe, share something with your friends, maybe give us a little sty fivestar review uh to help out your hardworking spiritual friends in Jin and Tantra. That would be greatly appreciated.

Yeah. Otherwise, yeah, totally like spoiler alert. don't want to ruin it, but

yeah.

Yeah. I think that this whole subject matter is fascinating though, you know, like when you really get to the point of realizing when you really understand it, you know, that there's, you know, well, we we're going to get to it as we go.

Yeah.

Last episode was sort of more about the toxic authoritarian Christianities just to kind of like talk about that. And I had some interesting conversations about that. One of our things we were trying to get to last week was when you talk about toxicity in spiritual systems or really any systems because I was talking with some people I know from the Soviet Union and they were like you know we had our own religion over there called Sovietism and it was authoritarian and toxic too and they just kind of took out uh the trinity and put in Marx, Angles and Lenin and it was the same thing and I was like okay kind of fascinating. So it can really happen in any spiritual system.

But even even the the idea of the trinity itself was brought like really put forth as an argument at the council of Nika and like was it 400 or 500?

Yeah, I think they're debating like like that's part of it. It really had to do with this idea. Again, I was doing my research around this, but it had to do a lot with like

two different arguments. one was was Jesus like part of God and they're the same or was Jesus sort of a slightly lesser divinity on the hierarchy and they were debating the [...] out of that point

right but so but this idea

it's called like aranism versus you know would be the orthodox position of the trinity you know anyway yeah go ahead sorry

yeah no but but this position it was not it's not a standard view of everybody it it developed and and I think in my research anyways and and You can speak for yourself.

Religions evolve there.

There isn't a orthodoxy. Well, if you're Orthodox and you believe in the Trinity, Jesus never talked about that.

Yeah.

Didn't. So, are you a are you a follower of what he said or of what was said after he said what he said? Which to me is not really Christianity because Jesus Christ was the person who the religion is based on. And yet it's influenced by so many other people in particular Paul you know um Paulianity might make more sense in my opinion but it just the the evolution of how where things go you we can never really know and and we're so far removed and these things are so far entrenched in in culture in government in just the ide zeitgeist you know that it's like now They're almost intractable. And the idea that like they weren't always this way almost seems blasphemous, but they weren't always this way. Yeah. I find it fascinating to think that like [clears throat] thousands of years of human culture are really made up of these very, you know, slightly rando things that are evolved out of other slightly random things. I wanted to do something. Let me throw it off of you because this really gets to the whole point of like historicity. So, let me like throw it at you and uh you'll give me your perspectives on this and maybe we'll double back to even the things like the Trinity and figure out where these fit in the story too.

Sure.

Because it's a wild story, but I agree with you on the point like one of the things that I think is amazing to cover this subject matter is what you

and I think it's a Buddhist insight or a tonic insight or something insight, you know, a philosophical insight where you realize like so many things are like so tenuous within this, right? Yeah.

And it's so, as you were pointing out, so woven into the culture, right, it can feel blasphemous or when you really take a step back, and I I want to double back to this later, but we live in a Christian culture. Whether you think you're Christian or not, you're still living within this paradigm. And it's all so so contingent about how it all set up. But let me do a little bit on historicity just to do it. And I'll get your feedback on this too.

Yeah.

So, um, okay. A little on historicity overall. So, okay. So the point on the one of the first points about this and if you don't know anything about this this is like a genuinely fascinating story like something sometimes I think they call the Jesus story the movies like the greatest story ever told and this is like part of the greatest story ever told like from a different point of view because it's amazing how it plays out. So if we think about, you know, what do we first have knowing anything about uh JC? And this [clears throat] happens in the like the 50s, right? You know, when you start to get

1950 AD, not 1950s.

Yeah. Not 1950s AD. The real first 50s. Yeah. And uh so we're talking like 20 years after the death of Jesus, if there is a Jesus. And we'll talk about mythsist positions, too, because there are people who say, "Well, maybe there's no character at all." But in any case, we're talking about in the 50s. And our first person for this, if you don't know anything about this is what you bring up, Daniel, Paul, right? Was the first person to start writing these things. And if you don't know anything about this, again, it's amazing story because you might not know it, but does Jesus ever meet Paul? The answer is no. [laughter]

Jesus and Paul never cross paths. Of course, the famous story is Paul has a vision on the way into Damascus and falls off his horse and it's a whole big whoop-dedoo, right? comes from visionary experience. So Paul's thing is all based on like visionary experience

and Paul's and even Paul's stories are based on Greek myth.

If we want to double back to it, but maybe that's to be to be continued. You could debate those questions, right?

Yeah.

U let me like I'll do it. Maybe we'll double back on the Greek myth part.

Sure. Yeah. Sure. Um, so and when you look at him like in like what he writes about, he writes very little about Jesus's life at all.

Correct.

He doesn't really seem to know very much about him. He knows that he's crucified and a lot of it comes to the point of like which I guess we'll get to, but you know, what does Paul think any of this means, but you know, he's like uh he doesn't really know him. He's writing in Greek. Jesus would have been like an Aramaic speaker, you know, in Jerusalem 20 years earlier. And uh Paul is writing in Greek. So even when he writes this kind of letters to the Romans, he's like in Greece, but he's traveling all over the place. The only thing you really get of any contact, and I don't know, this is like in your wheelhouse, Daniel. So I'll be curious to hear what you say about it. But there is this question of whether or not he meets James, who may be the brother of Jesus.

They said, yeah, James the just. They said they

It's a weird thing. So I was looking at this from different historical perspectives, right? It's kind of like an oddly open question. I wanted to bring it up.

So what happens is there's a text there's a part where

Paul meets says I didn't meet any apostles only James a brother of the Lord. And there's sort of this funny question of like is that James like the brother of Jesus or not the brother of Jesus? There's a historian named Richard Carrier. I'm just going to throw him out here because he talks about this idea that, you know, probably that wasn't translated right in the Greek. There are people who argue about that and it isn't obvious whether he's talking brother of the Lord in terms of like a title,

right?

You know, or like a biological brother,

you know, through Mary or something. So, even that is a little bit up in the air. But whether [clears throat] you take that one way or the other, one of the odd things in the whole story is that Paul meets presumably these people who knew Jesus, but he doesn't care what they say,

right?

He like deliberately doesn't listen to them and they debate about what it is that Jesus taught or thought or meant [laughter] if he did meet these people.

Correct. Yeah. So, it's a very odd story to have this guy who has these visionary experiences who's then arguing with the people who presumably knew the person that he's saying is this divine figure and he spends a lot of time debating with them and like disagreeing with them for whatever that means, right? It's very it's a very curious story. Anyways, I thought throw it back to you. It's really kind of amazing. If you don't know anything about it, it's jaw-dropping.

Yeah. Yeah. And and this really is, you know, and if you know these are, I don't know, interesting conversations, but this really is very very very reflective of the allegory of the cave. Plato's allegory of the cave. allegory of the cave. As we've talked about before, people are living, you know, essentially in a cave kind of like tied to a rock and all they ever see is these uh shadow figures on the wall that are cast by uh people's, you know, hands over a fire. So, they're casting shadows against a wall and people are always trying to figure these out and they don't understand and yada yada. Somebody gets out of the cave, they go into the daylight, it's blinding to them. They're they're completely disoriented. They're it's hard very hard for them to to fathom that there's a life outside of this cave. And then when they go back and try and convince the other people that this is the case, they don't believe them and they're arguing with him. That sounds exactly like this, like verbatim. Just change the character, change the the story, but the exact principles are the same thing. And there's just a lot of this tradition and a lot of many traditions that borrow from previous traditions. That's why I talked about earlier on the evolution of religion, where it comes from and where it ends up that I think without doing a deeper dive or without the the tradition expressing the seeds from which it gets its information from, you will assume, or at least it is my assumption that people will think or believe that this starts where they said it started. But that's just not true. And it doesn't actually diminish the experiences or the words coming from any of these particular people. That's your choice to believe what you want. However, it does give it does give context to the human psyche and how it is that we learn through stories and and what it is that we do when we're faced with something new and bright and shiny and different. We fight against it, you know, and then we assimilate it. So, it it's um Yeah, I I'll let you

Yeah. I mean, it's going to be one thing of like interpreting. I think if you don't know anything about it, it's shocking. Let me I'll do the Gospels.

Yeah.

So, we'll continue on the vibe, right? So, if you don't know anything about this, the Gospels. So, we have Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John, right? The four gospels that make up, you know, that part of the of the New Testament. And they're written later than Paul, right? The standard like historical understanding of this is they're written uh probably starting in like the 70s. So we're talking like uh not the 70s again like bell bottoms and disco [laughter] and [...] but the 70s like AD.

Yeah.

And um this idea that like you're talking now 40 years later after you know the primary figure for whom these things are presumably written about are gone. They're written in Greek. They're written by people who obviously didn't know Jesus. It's not obvious like who they would have known who would be second or thirdand stories, but they're supposed to be second or third hand. No one knows who wrote these things, which isn't always obvious to people, right? They're called Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. And I'm saying it in that order because that's presumably the order they were written. Mark probably first in the 70s. And people don't know when these other ones come up, but maybe they tend to say like maybe about 10 years apart. No one really knows, but Matthew will be next and then Luke and then John. So you're getting like by the end a long way away from whoever the people were who were originally involved in the story. But if you don't know anything about this, it's really kind of amazing because they're under these names, but they're not really written by those people,

right?

And no one thinks they are. So what happened was that these books were kind of when they became canonized or in the process of them becoming canonized, people kind of just said like, well, okay, this where I'm going to say is written by Mark, who is supposed to be someone who's associated with Peter, and this one's going to be written by Luke, who's someone who's supposed to be associated with Paul. The other two apostles. Where do those names come from? It's not claimed by the authors. It isn't obvious who wrote them. And if you don't know anything about that, that's also shocking because you would think, okay, that one should be written by those exact people. They're not, right? And historically that's kind of a known fact that they're not. So

also keep in mind at that time in history life expectancy was much lower.

Well that's a debatable point too. This goes back to civilized to death.

I was having this conversation about

you look up people like Isaac Newton lived into his 70s or his 80s a lot. So if like a lot of that life expectancy stuff was if you died young. So like we can like look that up maybe in some other episode but it's kind of a thing. If you survived, you might live to be pretty old. And it's kind of astonishing when you look at like a lot of the people, you're like, "Wow, that dude lived to 70, that dude lived to 80." A lot of that birth stuff happened because people would die young, you know? So sometimes you hear people say that everyone died in their 40s or something. And then you look and you're like, well, are these all outliers? All these old geysers running around. It's like it depended on what happened. Sure.

If you made it through your young life, a lot of times you would live to be longer, you know?

And it's funny when you look that up. I was just looking up some of the people around that exact point. You know, again, it's it's argument that people make a lot of times that those numbers look worse because so many kids die when they're young,

right? Yeah. Famine and

so it skews it. Yeah.

So, if you made it to a certain point, you might have like you might live to like what we'd expect to be normal life expecties now, you know, and then people die. It was I again I was just this is a tangent of course, but I was looking at like the dude who played Black Panther died of cancer. Is it Chadwick Boseman? Yeah. like you it's really shocking. You know, you you think about these life expectancy things and then you watch people that we know within our lifetimes who die of these things. It's, you know, it's kind of a crapshoot probably the whole time. But anyways, it's interesting point.

I don't know like if you look at that longevity question I'm trying to bring up. I don't know how that would affect these people. It's a good Jesus didn't make it that long.

Right.

That's for another reason.

Another reason why we're here.

Yes. [laughter] That's why we're talking about him. Um, but anyways, you know, these I mean other things would happen. So, but it's it's interesting question though. I wonder about that question too about life expecties in that talking that way. I just heard someone bringing that up. But, um, so, uh, so we got these four gospels and yeah, I was just doing this a little bit, you know, beforehand and it's a kind of an interesting exercise. Maybe we, you know, you can try on your own if you don't have any experience with this kind of stuff, but um, and we'll explore it as we go, maybe, but they all tell different stories. And it's kind of amazing if you don't know about this. And you know, now we have our little Google searches. It's pretty easy to do it. But um you know, Bartman, who's one of the historians of the New Testament, who I'm kind of using as one of my touchstones for this. Daniel, I know you have your touchstones, too.

Yeah.

Right. But he has a great line where he talks about the Gospel of John versus the other gospels. And in the first three of those gospels, Mark, Matthew, and Luke, which are sometimes called the synoptic gospels, which means something like they can be looked at together because they're so similar. It's obvious that those people were sharing sources, right?

And it seems like Luke and Matthew were looking at Mark, the first of these, because there's like verbatim passages that are just coming out of Mark into these other books. So people are like, "Okay, crack the code. These people were looking at this other book and then they were adding or subtracting things according to whatever they wanted to do.

John is considered to be really different. John is the one where Jesus is going around saying I'm God all the time and the other ones he never says anything like that.

So you have to get to John and John's of course very famous for like the beautiful passages that people love you know uh in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. these kind of very poetical things that's in John could be fascinating book even it's not even a critique of it but it's different right and in that story Jesus is running around all I should say story in that gospel people are running Jesus is running around talking all the time about how he's god and uh part has this great line like what happened to the first three gospels did they just forget to include that part

right they just thought that wasn't important to mention [laughter] that's a good Fine. But the funny thing that you can do maybe as an experiment is if you think of any famous story that you think about with Jesus, you can always do what happened in these other gospel. Do they just forget to mention that part?

Right?

So I was looking at Sermon on the Mount, right, as a starting point. And you know, you can all do this for yourself, but that one's only in Matthew. It's not in the other three. Did they forgot to mention that part?

Right. Yeah. Were they not? They were they not Oh, none of them were there. But

did they did they miss it that day?

Raph.

Yeah. So sermon on the mount only there uh the virgin both stories not in John not in Mark only in Luke and Matthew and they're totally different if you don't know that that's a shocker too and we can talk about how they're different maybe at some other time.

Yeah.

So that's different.

Think of any other famous story you know like uh the golden rule you know do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. Not in Mark not in Luke or not in Mark. not in John. They're only in Matthew and Luke. Probably because they were copying like either from each other or they were copying from other source where that shows up. Um the Lord's Prayer, which I said is a like a Catholic kid, is that in all the gospels? No, it's only in Luke and Matthew. It's not in Mark and John. They forgot to like include that part in the story.

They left it They left it out on accident.

Yeah, that was like an oversight. [laughter] uh render under Caesars only in the three synoptic gospels. Uh the woman taken in adultery only in John. [laughter] Who did Jesus raise from the dead? Lazarus only in John.

The other freak forgot to bring that point up.

Yeah. Small small point to exclude, but you know.

Yeah. They just they just uh they forgot that part.

Yeah. And you can continue on with it, right? like take almost anything that you know I mean the sermon on the mount is really shocking right I mean some of the most beautiful patches passages again that you have but it's only in one

woman in adultery only in John uh render under Caesar what is to be Caesars's John doesn't include that forgot to mention it you know rich man through the eye of a needle John doesn't have that one either you know and it continues on this way

yeah yeah

it's kind of fascinating when you really like take it apart and if you again if you don't know anything about this. It's like quite shocking, right? Where you realize like, you know, take all anything that you know and you start to realize, well, that's just a little thing in that one story that was written, you know, decades later that that author tried to include. Uh oh, I did a couple of the other ones. You know, walking on the water isn't in Luke.

You got enough. You got enough.

No, I'm into it, dude. I'm gonna continue to go. I don't give a [...] not going [clears throat] because I think it's [...] fascinating. What else do you know? Turning water into wine only in John. Name anyone you got. Try it for yourself. The good Samaritan only in Luke. The other ones forgot. Try it. Do it for yourself. Choose the most famous thing you know about Jesus and you'll find that this is the answer. And I think this raises this like really profound question which is like kind of a big one for me and you'll have your own feeling about this too, Daniel. But like one of the things I've been noticing in looking at this is that um there's a lot of people who are talking now about this idea. Well, let's find like the real Jesus,

right?

Who's the real Jesus? And like again through the exercise we were just doing with this, there is no real Jesus gone, right? So wherever that person was and I'm like very empathetic on this point. I've been listening to people who again broke away from sort of these Christian nationalist circles and they keep going people are following Paul but not Jesus or people are trying to like not follow the real Jesus and what you ultimately realize is there is no real Jesus y'all there's no person there or whoever that person was is gone and the historian ways of talking about this is just to say yeah we all realize that there's all of these other inclusion of these other events that probably were traditions that developed that people included in these stories. Maybe it was part of one community, not part of another.

And we can try to like scrape this away to try to find who this real person is. And again, I'm empathetic on how people you feel an emotional attachment to a spiritual figure. I get it. But, you know, it's also the part of the truth of like that person, if you want to look at it as a historical thing, is gone,

right?

You're not going to know anything about that person. So, there is no real Jesus to find in the end of all of this. Uh, I know. I'll throw it out to you, Daniel. I mean, what do you think about that whole thing? I find that to be astonishing and I don't find it to be something that like people talk about.

Yeah, I feel like it's uh it's an eternally moving target. First of all, second, you know, we're all going to have different perspective. So, we'll use you for an example. Your son sees you differently than your daughter does. Sees you, you know, different than the mother of your children does. See, sees you different than your own mother does. different than I do, different than some of your students. And how people look at you will inherently change how they represent you to other people. So you you know, we don't talk about him too much and we're not going to now, but like your your your brother's older or younger, Eric?

He's younger.

He's younger. He's six years younger than me.

So he's going to have a very different perspective of you than many other people for for many reasons. But one that he grew up with you, you guys shared a household. You had some similar traumas. He might have totally different experience. You maybe fought over certain things, whatever, you know. So his view of you is very different. How he's going to explain you to somebody else who has no idea who you are is going to sound different than perhaps, you know, somebody who's, you know, took went to school with you for several years, took a bunch of classes with you, was in clinic with you, learned with you, you helped to change their life. That's a totally different perspective. So where is the real person? I don't know. And I'm just playing devil's advocate here. The real person is only to be had by those who were around them first. So just from a you know a perspective, you know, I guess a commentary on perspective. But then the the the second part that brings us maybe more to this argument is that the the differences the vast differences from the way that these people saw him does have to make you question how is something that would we would consider a miracle which is what the religion itself considers a miracle not be mentioned? Why are some things mentioned multiple times and other things only mentioned once by one particular author when those things that are mentioned once like you know raising somebody from the dead and giving sight to the blind and so on and so forth only mentioned in one I would imagine again just being a human that these would be mentioned by numerous people so it is sort of odd that it's not uh shared by more than one you know what I mean

well I mean I think like the part that I find amazing about it is it's Because I mean the obvious thing to say if you want to like look at it historically is because these stories are made up. It's not like the one part I think in your analogy I think it's interesting like you name a person you say well different people see different parts of that person will describe different things. We're talking about people writing in Greek about an Aramaic person who died decades earlier, you know, who they didn't know, who maybe had like they had stories through some oral tradition. And you know, again, I've been really influenced by like people who doing this from the historical perspective because I think it's fascinating and it has its own power to it, right? who are like really writing spiritual texts that are part of like the creation of themselves of their own community in which they're involved with and you know have tangential relationships to a historical figure if there was a historical figure to begin with in the first place

right

you know so I mean I I love the analogy of looking like different people will see different parts of a person in this case though we're really talking about like from like again you know the historical person's point of view we're talking about things that are written decades and decades decades later about a person they never knew.

Right.

Right. That are like things that are like in some ways written as documents to tell a story,

right?

You know, about to make a spiritual point, right? And have like tenuous relationships back to like any historical person at all.

Well, and that's just kind of how it is. I don't know how you, you know, think about this, but I actually think that there is more value in the allegory than in a literal translation, particularly here, and I've always felt this way. I've always, you know, again, the the beliefs I have now are very close to where I when I was a kid, you know, and that these things have far more power as a story to teach than they do as a as a as a historical document about a particular time in history with one particular person because now I have to critique it as a historical as a document. Essentially, it's a documentary, right? And you can critique a documentary because we are historical loving people. We're a historical loving culture. I mean, not everybody, but generally speaking, there's tons of archaeologists and we love to wonder how other, you know, how did they build the pyramids and how did this happen and how did we want to know, right? You know, we're sort of obsessed with ourselves. You know what I'm saying? And now they're saying like, "Oh, and there's a story of this one guy who was actually God, but he was a human, but he was also God, but he was also totally just like you, but not like you at all. You're scum. He's perfect, but not you. You're trash. Thank him." You know what I'm saying? Like, it's it's a another way to like, I don't know, wrap yourself with yourself to feel like, "Oh, that could be me." You know? I people I feel like people have this kind of idea around it. Um, yeah. It's just it it's just sort of fascinating I guess to me how people will dismiss one or the other but miss the point when you do when you do that you know so looking at it as a historical document we can critique it looking at it as an as a story we can learn from it but there at least seemed to me not that many people who can be flexible enough to say well there's probably some historical person that as a historical document probably not the best. But as a teaching tool, it's probably good, but maybe not perfect. But if you do that, then you're looked at as like, how dare you? Of course he was a man born in in the year negative -3 and died in the year positive30 and did x y and z and you know oh by the way we can't account for like twothirds of his life sorry you know what I mean like it's crazy

even if you get to the two-thirds of his life you're talking about things like these are fictional stories

right [laughter]

but I I was very impressed with like you know again like we all have our touchstones that we use when we're prepping these things you and I do and we all have our touchdowns in life. But you know, I was very influenced by like listening to some of these historical historians of this talk about this and like I like Bartman a lot and he makes a kind of very profound point. He says, "The general way that people tend to do this is they go through and they want to take, you know, uh, all of these different subs stories, the Mark one, the Matthew one, the Luke one, and they just want to blend it into one like mega story

and like kind of ram all the pieces together."

Uh, and his point is like when you do that, you lose the fact that Mark was writing to have a certain point. there was something he was trying to communicate. Matthew told a different story because there was something else he was trying to communicate. And then Luke and John accordingly, right? They have different messages that they're trying to get across that could have different spiritual import, right?

What they're trying to communicate. And if you like kind of lose that and you try to like put them all into a blender and mix them all together, you lose the fact of what that spiritual document is supposed to be, right?

Yeah. in the in the chase for what you were kind of talking about before and the chase for sort of like a historicity that doesn't exist, right?

Yes.

And then you end up with the you know so anyways I think it's I don't know we'll see how this fits with other people. I know for me this was like was raised as a Catholic kid you know and this was fascinating for me. I was like oh well this is how this really is. I wasn't Catholic anymore you know but I still felt my own emotional connections to my roots. Right. Sure,

nothing wrong with that. You know, I felt affected by the things that I did. And uh and it's not to be something where where um you know, you still can't have things that you believe with and connect with and you love within this. You know, I was just sort of touched by the idea of people again, it's been a big thing that has crossed my path where people going like, well, this has become the Jesus of Paul and not the Jesus the religion of Jesus and the religion of Jesus is in the Gospels. I'm like, the gospels are written after Paul, y'all.

Right.

Right. By people who don't have any direct contact at all. Right. And once you start to really take that apart, you start to realize, okay, what really happened here?

Yeah.

Within these stories. And it's it's it's actually I maybe it's the zenit for me too. It's kind of mind-blowing, you know, especially when you look at like how the influences of these things have like moved through the millennia, right?

Yeah. without us really. Again, if you never heard this before, it's it's mind-blowing, right?

Yeah. So, I know where do you want to go next? You want to talk about the different kinds of Christianities that were available at the time or do you want to talk about how they are the different Jesuses in the Gospels or where do you want to go with it or you want to just let it hang?

Yeah, I think we'll let it hang for now just given the time.

You know, those are longer than five minute pieces

for sure.

You know what I mean? So,

yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, anyways, for the closer on it, it's something astonishing. And I think

I think what I don't know what it means, maybe this is like we got a couple minutes left. I don't know what it means for there to be like no real person at the heart of this where everyone else is going to have to come up with whatever they think this person means to them. It's

right.

It's wild to think what that actually means. So, I'm going to go back to the beginning of our conversation when we talked about the Council of Nika when they were discussing the Trinity, what it was, what it is, you know, all of this. I've heard different arguments, as I'm sure you have. some of the more I don't want to say nihilistic, but I'm going to use that word just for purposes of this conversation said that it was created and disseminated and really pushed because it because it's illogical and

that's a kind of a standard take. It's supposed to be like a paradox.

Correct. I know [clears throat] like in church it was always this part and if you have flashbacks at church I apologize but it was always like [laughter] let us explore the mystery of faith is the way this is done when I was a kid.

Beautiful. Yes.

And then we would go through and we'd explore the mystery of faith.

Ah like

which is that this is not supposed to be crackable. Right.

Right.

Yeah. But there that you know and from who I heard it from definitely is a little bit more of a you know pessimist but they said that it was their interpretation that not only was this done on purpose to be illogical it was done on purpose to push people's uh questioning aside to say well you don't understand it so don't bother questioning it you can't understand it it's not for you to understand don't worry about it just believe it and that this aspect of the faith is belief in miracles, belief in things that you don't understand, that's it. That's that's that's it. And that really is disempowering from a user perspective. Meaning, if I'm going to use this faith in my life, which I think is the point, I think, I could be wrong. Let's go back to what, you know, Mr. Jesus said about these things. Oh, wait. No one knows. um you know but is from what they say you know gospel of Thomas or something else like this that you're supposed to use it but when you have to question the core and it's intentionally ambiguous the argument for this is say well this is a a divine providence that your human mind simply can't understand well then why can't we kick it around and have discussions around it Well, no, sir. We cannot do that. I find that to be it, it seems to me, and again perhaps I'm a bit pessimistic, intentionally misleading, intentionally misleading to keep the congregation always in a bit of a state of a confusion. And therefore, they are easier to manipulate or control. and the we are having a discussion about Christianity in relation to Christ as a person and the stories associated with him. But what is also happening simultaneously in our discussion and it's not in this discussion it was in the one previous and I'm sure it'll come back again. It's the evolution of the faith as a religious practice, but it's also evolution of the faith from a social perspective as it begins to merge into uh government.

Well, you might call like a mechanism of control.

Yes.

And I've wondered about this too because if you set this thing up where it's so like when it is so illogical, whatever your intention is, right,

whatever it is,

you can be charitable or not charitable about. Sure.

But if you set up a system where it doesn't make any sense purposely,

right?

Purposefully. Yeah.

Then you're like undermining the critical thinking apparatus of the people who are going to be the participants in that.

And I've wondered about that like once that hits you. Okay. So that's how maybe whatever the intentions were or whatever people were arguing, they were arguing this, it seems like historically they were arguing this abstract point.

Yes. Aras said that Jesus was below God and this pissed some other people off and and then uh other people like no they're all have to be equal whatever that meant,

right?

And then Constantine is there like you all got to like have a council.

Yes.

And straighten this [...] out because I'm not going to have you all arguing about this stuff

and ruining the religion of my state.

Correct.

Which I now have adopted to be the religion of my state.

Yes. So whatever the intention was, maybe it would have been more logical to say the father is on the top and the son underneath, but that didn't win. The other one won for whatever the reasons were. And um and but I have wondered about like once you start undermining rationality and maybe this is where we come from somewhat in what you get in something like Buddhist tantra or in Dowoism, you could be a rational person within that.

But if you break the rationality gears, what does that do to people? Right.

Yes. when you break them. And then the other part and I guess we'll go on as we do this because I it's again it's kind of a fascinating thing like well how did people what were all the different versions that had exploded out of this.

Yes.

You know um but you end up with a bunch of people that no matter what you try to conclude about it you're a heretic.

Yes.

So if you believe well you know God is on top and Jesus is second guess what heretic right and everything gets labeled a heresy. So you always have people a lot on the defensive. And one of the guys I like a lot was making the point about like no matter what when you ask when you talk to people now

about how they try to like piece together their faith for themselves, right?

What you inevitably find out is they're doing some heresy [laughter]

one way or another. Like oh that's that heresy that's that heresy to be continued.

But I don't know what that does to people. I think it's a really interesting point, Daniel, and I I had the same questions in my mind.

What happens once you once you get this kind of process going? What does that do to people?

Yeah. Yeah. And what Yeah. I mean, because everything really comes down to what is your path?

Yeah.

Your personal path, whether you're a Christian, whether you're Catholic, it doesn't, you know, you still have your own path. You could be totally, you know, like a spiritual free agent, as I like to call myself, or you could be a 100% orthodox in whatever tradition that you want to be in. It's still your path. The way that Eric, you're going to understand something and the way that I'm going to understand something are going to be slightly different. Even if it's the exact same material, you have your life perspective, you have your own internal perspective, your own everything else. Right? So the question is is like what is our p like how does this affect our path towards whatever ends we're wanting it to be? We've talked about this before. What's someone's organizing principle, right? And we you you and I both have said that like you know the idea of enlightenment or the idea of gaining betterment such that my compassion could be more uh effective to help other people. you know, uh is a is a an aligning principle for my life. That's the overarching theme that I am working on. And I and I wear those glasses and those help me to see things better. So the the path is what really what it's about, right? And I just I wrote this thing the other day. I didn't I didn't share this with you before, Eric, but it came out of a a classroom of mine uh which you are familiar. Uh and uh I said I'm quoting myself now because you know I'm doing this. Uh the tapestry of the path is woven with strands of faith.

And I just the way that I saw that was literally a path that we walk on is many threads, many different strands of of things that are weaving it together. But there are there are strands of faith. And it's not the only thing that weaves that path together for us. It's an important part of it, but it's not the only thing. Because for me, faith and doubt work together. The negation of doubt doesn't inherently yield faith immediately. It doesn't. The negation of doubt yields generally confidence, you know, but faith and confidence are not the same thing. So having faith doesn't mean you're getting rid of doubt. Having faith doesn't mean that, you know, that Jesus wasn't an actual human or that he's only a story or that he does exist or that he doesn't. It's not. It's neither one. It's both. Having faith is that, yeah, there's a person, but how does it influence my path? What am I doing? What am I working on? And I think people have a really difficult time accepting responsibility and really asking themselves like, what is my faith? And more importantly, how does that move me along my path? or do I even have a path? What even is a path? You know what I'm saying? So, I I try and keep those two, you know, faith and doubt, th those two juxipositions simultaneous, yin and yang, right? We're Dallas, so that's who's giving this discussion.

I'm really struck by, and we'll we'll get out of here, I know, in a second, but I'm really struck by like

what's been coming up in a lot of these episodes that we've been recording like towards the last two or three months, right? which has been on the one hand there's an individual level that these can affect you on right yeah

part of this is individual and we of course we think that's very important even we had these episodes we did on this thing called the emotional plague from this psychologist well home you can check out the episodes if you want

but it's one of these things where you could say okay if you have toxic ideas within a culture within a society that's what Reich meant by that can affect you as an individual and that can hold you back in terms of your ability to go forward right Yeah.

On the other hand, you can also find that you're in a socioultural setting where these toxic ideas are affecting like across the board. And one of the wild things about this particular one is that, you know, you could see that if you get a toxic version of a spirituality that or a religion that like takes tries to take everything over, it creates problems for everyone. Right.

Right. And then that becomes a wild thing because then you realize like that version of that religion that's being used by this group of people like um there's no there there

right

and that's being done in a way that like uh I suppose could be seen as being opportunistic by the people who are doing that. But I think a lot of times people really believe those things.

Yeah.

Right. I don't think it's a question of always just cynicism. I think people really are so imshed in these ideas and until you and then the shocking thing I I think from the stuff we've been talking about the things that shocked me was like when you really go and you investigate you find out wait a minute there's nothing there in there right there's no particular reason why that person should have the advantage of claiming that they have the true religiosity whichever whichever one you're claiming right

right right

you know you don't have any right or justification that cuz when you really like look at it there's there's no there there right which means that like I suppose on an [clears throat] individual level you can decide okay this is this is my Jesus this is what I relate to within this core of teachings you know right

and we don't have to have arguments about who's the real one right the same way you don't have the arguments of like okay I know you're that's yours you don't have the right to impose that on everybody else

correct

just because that one's yours all right so that's my feeling on it. You know, we all get to look at an individual level and then we all get to look at like what this means on like a collective level. And that that is kind of stunning to think,

wow, like tons of people are going to be put under the the uh the dominance of a set of ideas that are like this. They've just made it up or chosen to take that particular version ando impose it on others.

Well, we all have the choice of our own Jesus. Choose your own. [laughter]

Daniel and I probably like gnostic Jesus, but choose whichever one you want. a smorgus board of Jesus eye [laughter] and

choose the one that you vibe with.

That's right. That's right.

You have to search for the real one. All right. Cool. All right. Great. Daniel, thanks so much.

Always. Eric, thank you so much. Audience, thank you for listening uh for tuning in however you catch us. Uh hit us up Jyn andtragmail.com or hit us on the gram, the Jin and Tantra podcast. Leave a comment, like, subscribe, do all the things that people ask. Uh you know, we appreciate everybody listening. If you've made it this far, your attention span is in the top 3% of all human beings. And that number is actually going to go down because we're just making more shorter and shorter uh form contact uh content. But not us. We keep it real. And uh you know, we appreciate everybody tuning in, especially to the end. So, uh give yourself a pat on the back if you made it this far. And really genuinely, honestly, I know I say it every time, but we do really appreciate people tuning in. It it you know, it's nice and it keeps us motivated. And uh yeah, we'll keep doing uh what we're doing. And if you have a desire for us to cover something or you have a question, please feel free. Jin Antantragmail.com for Eric. This is Daniel. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Deuces. [music]